God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
by Rokesmith
Summary: On Christmas Eve, Weiss pursue a foreign priest, and discover he has an agenda more dangerous and more insane than they could have imagined. Contains adult concepts.
1. Let Nothing You Dismay

**God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen**  
Rokesmith

**Disclaimer:** Weiss Kreuz, it's characters, indices etcetera belong to Takehito Koyasu, Kyoko Tsuchiya and Project Weiss. This fanfic was written for fun rather than profit and any resemblances to persons living or dead are purely coincidental.

**Author's Note:** This is my attempt at a _Weiss Kreuz_ Christmas fic, written mainly because I've always found the Christmas carol from which I took the title to be incredibly sinister. Thanks to quietladybirman for encouraging me and helping me iron out the plot. I should also note that the religious opinions expressed are those of the characters alone, they do not represent those of myself or any Christian denomination.

* * *

Chapter One: Let Nothing You Dismay

The day of Ken's birthday, a week before New Year, the Koneko was in chaos. Ken had barely been given time to look at his presents before being plunged into an entire day in the shop's back room organising decorative arrangements for the New Year's celebrations. They seemed to be particularly popular as decorations and presents this year, and the shop had been inundated for the past two days as the rush started and everyone seemed to want to decorate their houses in preparation for the holiday.

"If this keeps up," he said, looking up from the latest arrangement, "we're going to run out of flowers. Can't we just stop taking orders?"

Youji looked up from the table on the other side of the room and flicked his wrist. "No argument from me, Kenken. I'm getting repetitive strain injury doing all this calligraphy."

It was a statement of Youji's exhaustion that he couldn't be bothered to finish the statement with the obvious innuendo. He barely had the strength to lift his head as Omi pushed open the door from the shop. It seemed a shame that the boy had to spend his winter holiday fielding dozens of orders above and beyond the girls who now had even more time to spend in the shop. Youji had seen Omi endure a lot and stay cheerful, but several days of this, and the prospect of another week of the same, was starting to have a visible effect on his normally cheerful outlook.

"Ken-kun, Youji-kun, we closed the shop."

Ken slumped back in his chair. "Thank God."

Youji put what felt like the last of his energy into finishing the New Year greeting and slipping it into the arrangement next to him, then he slumped too. "I'm going for a cigarette," he muttered. "As soon as I can stand up."

"No smoking in the shop," Ken said.

The trio stayed slumped, listening to the sounds in the shop outside. They were so exhausted, none of them noticed when the noise from the outside stopped, or the silence afterwards. They didn't even pay much attention when the door opened, but it wasn't Aya's voice that jolted them out of their reveries.

"Long day, boys?"

Ken nearly fell backwards out of his chair. Youji blinked sharply behind his glasses. Omi sprang to his feet.

"Manx-san!"

The scarlet-haired secretary stood in the doorway, clashing horribly with Aya and his orange sweater. Youji gave her his usual bold smile as he rose to his feet and followed her down to the basement, along with the others. Aya was the only one who wasn't showing the strain of the day, although, Youji reflected, that was probably because he'd done even less work than the others.

The static on the video cleared to show an image so different from the joy and excitement upstairs. A young woman lying in an alleyway, surrounded by blood. And a moment of shock as they all realised her body was swollen, but that bulge had a wound driven clean through the centre. She was the latest of five young women murdered in this fashion on the streets of Tokyo in the past several months, all of them pregnant. The killer was an American missionary priest called Timothy Jackson, who could not be arrested without the Americans claiming one of their citizens was being unfairly persecuted.

Watching the video, Youji found himself thinking about the old western traditions of Christmas and Santa Claus. Listening to the words of the tape, he wondered how many times Persia checked his list of who was nice and who was naughty.

At the end of the briefing, Youji wished Manx a happy new year, but she left the briefing file with Omi and left the shop without replying. Youji wondered who she'd be spending the holiday with, then had to think of other things as Aya ordered him upstairs along with Ken to finish clearing up the shop. When that was finally done he collapsed beside Ken on the basement sofa and waited for Omi to finish reviewing mission information and finding out all he could about the target.

"You haven't given me a birthday present yet," Ken said a while later.

"Sorry." Youji sat up. "I didn't have time earlier."

"What did you get me?"

"I can get you laid."

"Youji!"

Youji grinned. "That's what I thought you'd say. I booked you a slot with a friend of the guy who services my Seven. He'll go over your bike and make sure none of those improvements you made are going to damage it or you. He can probably make some suggestions about other things you can do to it, but I made him promise not to change anything unless you said he could."

"Thanks, Youji." Ken smiled.

"But if you change your mind about the girl..."

"Shut up!"

"Please," Aya said.

The silence resumed for a few minutes, until Omi looked up from the computer. "I've collated all the information," he announced. "I'm still not sure whether there's a pattern in the girls. They were all pregnant and none of them were married. I don't know if that's a pattern, though."

"Does it matter why he's doing it?" Aya asked.

"It might do, Aya-kun."

"He's got to be nuts!" Ken exclaimed. "Why would anyone want to kill pregnant girls? Unless... they're all his kids or something and he's doing this to cover it up."

"If he's American, he can just use a condom like the rest of us." Youji shook his head. "He won't have someone telling him he can't. I think that's just your lot, Ken."

"Then why the hell would he do it?" Ken demanded. "Why the hell would you kill a girl and a kid before it's even been born? And he was! He was making sure the babies were dead!"

Youji picked up the file. "None of these girls were over twenty-five and none of them were married. In fact, the first one, Maria, he killed nearly a year ago and she wasn't even pregnant. She was a Japanese convert and the only one Kritiker can say he actually knew. These would all have been their first kids too. The second one was killed seven months ago and was two months gone; the third was at four months and he murdered her at the beginning of August; the fourth was seven months along and died in October and Jackson killed the last one a few weeks ago, and she was nearly due."

"Youji-kun..." Omi began.

Youji blinked. "Yeah, I see it too."

"I can do sums in my head too, you know," Ken muttered.

"They would all have given birth at the same time," Aya said.

"At the end of December," Omi said. "Now. Why?"

"I can find out," Youji told him. "You and Aya can stay here and plan the mission, I'll go and talk to some more of these missionaries and find out about Jackson. Then I'll go and break into his apartment and take a look around. Ken can come too, I don't understand any of this Christianity stuff and he does."

"You knew about the condoms," Ken said.

Omi sighed. "Ken-kun, could you go with Youji tomorrow? We might need to understand Jackson-san's religion."

"Then why ask me?" Ken responded. "It's not my religion."

"Aya-kun and I can stay here and do research and help Momoe with the shop," Omi continued. "It might look odd if none of us are there tomorrow, since it's a holiday. Do you have any questions?"

"Not really," Ken said. "But do we really have to kill someone at Christmas?"


	2. We Were Gone Astray

Chapter Two: We Were Gone Astray

The next day, Youji and Ken stood outside Jackson's church, which, Omi had discovered, was also in Shibuya. It did not look like any of the Catholic churches that Ken was familiar with and Youji had seen around the city. This one looked almost like a small apartment block, complete with a ramp up to the entrance and a satellite dish on the side. It was only the simple white cross on the roof and the _kanji_ letters on the side that indicated that the unassumingly modern brown building was a church.

"Go and buy yourself a cup of coffee," Youji told Ken. "I'll handle this."

"Why can't I come in?" Ken demanded.

"Because I know what you're like," Youji responded. "If I bring you in there you'll just end up getting angry with everything. How am I going to find out about Jackson if you're on your way to becoming one of their pet projects?"

The inside of the church was also different from the ones Youji had seen. It was a lot more casual, a long hall with rows of wooden pews and several other rooms that looked like they could have come from any office building in the city, except the inside was full of sparkly western Christmas decorations, including the obligatory fake tree in the corner of the entrance hall. Wondering where they'd got it from, Youji swiped one of the leaflets as he went past, crumpled it slightly, and then fished it out of his pocket again as a conservatively-dressed American girl with untidy mousy-brown hair smiled at him.

"Can I help you?" she asked, speaking slightly awkward Japanese with an accent Youji would have thought was entirely incompatible with the language.

"Hi." Youji made an effort to speak clearly. "I met a man a few weeks ago who gave me this. He said his name was Timothy Jackson and that if I wanted to talk to him about it I could come by at any time. I thought I'd come and see him since I have the day off for the holiday."

"I'm afraid Tim's not here now," she answered, and even through the language barrier, Youji could tell she was worried.

"What's wrong?"

"It's nothing," she said. "It's... just that Tim hasn't been in for over a week, and before that he was saying some funny things. But that's just what I heard. He had an argument with our pastor before he left. We're all praying for him." She smiled again. "He'll be back after his holiday and he'll be fine. You can come back and speak to him then, unless you'd like to talk to me."

On any other day, Youji might have accepted, but there was a mission to complete, and he didn't know whether even he was up to flirting with a Christian girl in a language she only partially understood. So he politely declined, saying he had some New Year shopping he had to do and went to find Ken.

"Was she pretty?" Ken asked.

"Hard to tell under all that winter clothing," Youji replied. "But she had a nice mouth."

"Are you going to take her out tonight?"

Youji shook his head. "I can't flirt with American girls; they take everything far too seriously. English girls, on the other hand..."

A few minutes later, they were at a payphone and Youji rang the shop. "Omi, it's Youji. I tried making the delivery at the work address, but the recipient wasn't there because of the holiday, and his friend said he was feeling a bit weak. Do you want me to try him at home?"

"Yes, Youji-kun," Omi replied cheerfully. "Make sure he's at home."

***

The missionary society had set Jackson up in an apartment one stop on the subway from the church. Omi's reply had told Youji only to go in if he was sure that Jackson wasn't there. He wasn't answering his bell or Youji's knock on the door, but since it was getting dark and even colder, neither Youji nor Ken had any idea where he might be. Ken suggested, as Youji picked the lock, that Jackson had simply done away with himself. They knew it would not be that easy.

The inside of the apartment was dark, but when Youji flipped the light on it was as he expected: a small, sparsely furnished room without much of a view through the window. It was also freezing, the central heating had been turned off for a long time. He indicated Ken to go left, through the door into the bedroom and examined the open living area and kitchen. The first thing he noticed was that the main kitchen table was scattered with small shards of metal, tools and short pieces of wire. As he examined the table, he noticed several small piles of a white crystalline powder, almost like salt. He touched it cautiously, but had no idea what it was; it didn't look like a drug, more like something found in a high school chemistry lab. Youji went to the sink to wash it off his fingers, noticing there was more around there, but as he ran the tap he heard a trickle of water and opened the cupboard to find the source. Water was leaking over the floor from where someone had removed a piece of the sink's piping.

"Youji! Youji!"

He had no time to wonder what part of Jackson's insanity had caused him to dismantle his plumbing. He sprang to his feet and hurried into the bedroom to answer Ken's call.

He found Ken standing on the other side of the small bedroom, in front of a wardrobe whose doors were wide open. Stuck crudely to the doors with tape was a mass of paper: there were pictures of the dead girls, pages torn from an English Bible, charts, maps and printouts of internet sites in several different languages. Every one of the sheets had been marked in red, with sections highlighted or circled, with untidy notes scribbled next to them.

"Do you understand any of this, Ken?" Youji asked.

"I thought you spoke English too," Ken responded.

"I can read what most of it says," Youji told him. "I just don't know what it means."

Ken looked over the pages with the most red on them. "These are pages from the Bible, Youji. This one's from Daniel, that's the end of Matthew, but most of these are from Revelation. And these ones aren't even really from the Bible. I think this the Apocrypha, I don't know what that one is, and this one's probably from that mad American book."

"I'm impressed."

Ken shrugged. "The nuns wanted us to know how everyone else was doing it wrong."

"Is any of it going to tell us where he is?" Youji asked.

"I don't understand any of it," Ken said. "It's just... stupid."

There was a faint beep from inside Youji's pocket. He dug through his overcoat to find the radio and then unfolded the headset.

"Did you find anything, Youji-kun?"

"I'm not sure, Omi," Youji replied. "He's not here and all we found was a wardrobe full of what Ken tells me is bits of religious books in English so we don't really know what they're saying. I think he just did it because he's lost his mind. The only other things he's done is cover his kitchen table in bits of metal and this odd white powder, and take one of the pipes out of the sink, which is just more evidence for the insanity plea."

"What?" Ken exclaimed.

"Hang on, Omi." Youji put his hand over the microphone. "There's white crystalline powder on the table and he took one of the pipes of the sink. Why?"

Ken grabbed the headset. "Omi, he'll call you back."

He flipped off the headset and dragged Youji into the next room. Youji opened the cupboard to show the missing bit of plumbing and then pointed to the white crystals in the sink and on the table. Ken ran his fingers through the powder and swore.

"It's potassium chlorate, Youji!"

"What do you know about chemistry, Ken?"

"You put it in bombs, Youji!" Ken shouted. "You take any bit of pipe, fill it with this powder, any bits of metal around to do even more damage and then fit a simple electric detonator. It's called a pipe bomb!"

Youji flipped the radio back on and relayed the information to Omi, who was silent for a moment and then asked, "Did he leave anything to indicate where he might go?"

"No," Youji said. "But we'll look again, just to be sure."

There was another moment of silence before Omi came back. "Aya-kun thinks there may be a pattern in how Jackson-san located his victims. He and I will investigate that. Could you do one more check and then come back to the shop?"

Youji signed off and then looked at Ken. "I still want to know why he's doing it."

"He's nuts!" Ken said. "Does he need a reason?"

"Even crazy people do things for a reason," Youji replied.

He walked back into the bedroom and looked at the paper on the wardrobe doors. He looked over the religious texts and then his eyes settled on one of the internet printouts. It looked like a timeline of some sort, but he couldn't make out the details. Several events had been circled and annotated, several had been underlined, and one near the bottom was both.

"I don't know what that says," Ken told him.

Youji carefully read the unfamiliar word at the top of printout. "Rapture."

"Mary, Mother of God!" Ken exclaimed.

"What now?"

"He thinks the world's coming to an end," Ken explained. "The Rapture's this thing some American Christians believe in. They think God will call all the faithful up into heaven without them dying, then Satan will escape from Hell and there'll be a huge fight, then Jesus will come back to judge everyone. That's supposed to be how the world ends, and I know it sounds stupid."

Youji nodded slowly. "He's trying to stop this, then? Does he think one of these girls was going to give birth to a kid with three sixes on its head like in that movie we watched?"

"No." Ken shook his head. "The first girl he killed was called Maria. He's doing it the other way round."

"What?"

"Maria is how we say Mary! Youji, he's trying to stop the Second Coming!"


	3. Tidings of Comfort and Joy

Chapter Three: Tidings of Comfort and Joy

After that, it wasn't too hard for them to figure out where Jackson was going. Ken spent the journey back to the shop through the freezing evening complaining that no one thought Jesus had actually been born at Christmas time, it was just an old celebration that the Christians had borrowed, and that shepherds didn't take sheep out to pasture in the middle of winter, until Youji told him to shut up. By the time they got back, Omi was exercising his skill with computers to once again infiltrate the computers of Tokyo's hospitals. While Youji went upstairs to cancel his date for the evening, Omi searched through the gynaecological records which, he admitted, he'd had no cause to look into before. It took him nearly two hours, but he found traces of someone else hacking into one of the databases, but they hadn't covered their tracks very well, not to someone who knew what he was looking for. The murdered girls' records had been accessed in the middle of the night, and the only other times that had happened was one woman who had delivered a child four weeks premature and another who had been diagnosed with gestational diabetes. In these four cases, nothing in the records which had been accessed had been changed.

"Just the one hospital?"

"Yes, Youji-kun. St Luke's."

The late-night holiday traffic extended the journey to nearly an hour. Aya's Porsche fought its way through the flocks of young people enjoying their holiday night out in Shibuya, into Chuo and to the towering hospital on the edge of the Sumida River.

"Are you sure he'll be here?" Aya asked as he slid the car into the underground car park.

"It's the Christian hospital," Ken told him. "Of course he's coming here."

They weren't in full mission gear, they could hardly wear that walking into a hospital that was doubtlessly going to be quite busy in preparation for whatever trouble the celebrating Tokyo residents could get themselves into. The long coats – one of which concealed Aya's sword – could be explained by the cold, and Ken's bugnuks could pass as gloves, but beyond that they were in normal clothes. As they reached the elevators, each of them was working out a story to explain their presence in the hospital.

"The maternity ward and the nursery are on the third floor," Omi said. "Aya-kun and I will search for Jackson-san there. Youji-kun, Ken-kun, can you take the rest of the hospital?"

The other two nodded and got off at the first floor, where they took another look at the complex, detailed diagrams of the two hospital buildings.

"It's a big place," Youji remarked. "How do we know he's even still here?"

"He thinks this is the last thing he has to do," Ken replied. "Nothing's happened yet, so he'll wait until he hears the explosion, just to make sure he's done it."

"So if he's not waiting with the bomb." Youji looked at the map again. "Where's he going to be?"

"Saying sorry," Ken said.

He stabbed his finger at a point on the plans, not in the main hospital but in the adjoining building. Youji leaned closer to see what he was pointing at, and his eyes widened in understanding. Then he looked around at the sound of trainers skidding on the floor and saw that Ken was already running for the bridge-like corridor that connected the two buildings. Youji pushed up his sunglasses and ran after him.

***

Aya attached the forged hospital ID to the outside of his coat – if anyone asked, he'd say Omi was his little brother who he was looking after for the holiday – just before the lift doors opened. The maternity ward was to the right of the lift doors, and on the other side was the nursery for the newborns.

The pair split up, Omi walking towards the delivery rooms, peering around like a curious and happy teenager in search of something to keep himself amused. Inside the maternity ward, he could see several women in the last stages of pregnancy, and, listening very carefully, he heard the sound of controlled, heavy breathing and the hopeful encouragement of a man and a nurse. For just an instant, Omi wondered what his own birth had been like, whether his mother's labour had been long, whether his father had been there, whether they had been happy with him then. But he shut those thoughts out, thinking only of the mission, scanning the room and realising that there was no sign of Jackson, and no way that Jackson could have planted a device there.

Beside the nursery, Aya was coming to the same conclusion. His eyes swept over the dozen babies in the nursery, tagged and watched over by several formidable nurses. He too faced a memory, the faded recollection of his sister coming home from the hospital in his mother's arms. The tiny baby had seemed so frail then, but, strangely, the girl now lying unconscious in a different hospital seemed frailer still.

"It's not in there," he told Omi.

"It's not there, either, Aya-kun," Omi said. "I don't know where Jackson-san put it."

"Where would you put it?"

Omi's eyes widened. He ran back towards the elevators and hurriedly forced the lock on the supply cupboard door opposite. In the centre of the small room was a cluster of oxygen tanks, far more than would normally used as a ward's reserve. It only took a moment for them to find the short metal pipe taped to the back of one of the tanks. It was a crude device, held together by tape and glue, with a mass of untidy wiring connecting a small digital clock to the pipe itself.

The timer on the clock read less than a minute, and it was counting down.

"Disarm it, Omi."

Omi stared at the device. "I don't know how, Aya-kun."

"You're the explosives expert!"

The boy shrugged desperately. "I know about C-4, electronic detonators and military-grade high explosive. This is just a pipe full of an unstable chemical and set off by half an alarm clock that Jackson-san could have blown himself up making. I don't know how it works so I don't know how to stop it."

"Then we'll throw it out of the window," Aya said.

"We can't do that, Aya-kun!" Omi protested. "This is a hospital! Innocent people might be hurt."

The countdown ticked down past twenty seconds.

"If we can't get rid of it and we can't leave it here, what do we do?" Aya demanded.

"Ken-kun knows about pipe bombs," Omi replied. "What do you think he would do?"

With eight seconds left before the device detonated, Aya shoved Omi out of the way, reached into the bomb's mechanism, and yanked the battery out of the timer.

***

A few minutes earlier, Youji and Ken had reached the doors of the hospital chapel on the second floor of the other building. It was a small room with several rows of wooden pews facing towards the wooden cross against the far wall, bearing the image of the crucified Christ. The lighting was dim at this time of night, but there was enough coming from the imitation candelabra for them to see the room. There was only one other person inside, an emaciated-looking man sitting in the front row, clasping his hands together.

Jackson looked up at the sound of the door. He stared at the two young men in the doorway and smiled, almost as if he had been expecting them.

"Gabriel? And Michael?"

"You think we're fucking angels?" Ken exclaimed.

"I'm sorry," Jackson said. "I'm so sorry. But I had to stop it. There are so many sinners still left in the world, and I have to save them from judgement. They have to be given time to see the light and be saved. They can all still be saved."

"You don't get to choose who lives and dies!" Ken responded.

Jackson advanced between the pews towards them. "It doesn't matter now. I will stand before my creator knowing I've done right."

There was something hypnotic about him, the peace and certainty in his eyes, which kept Youji and Ken from striking. He glanced down at his watch, as, on Youji's own, the digits turned over from 11:59 to 12:00, December 25th.

A moment passed in silence, as they all waited in the silent chapel for the sound of an explosion as an entire floor of the hospital was swallowed by a fireball. But all they heard was the silence.

"No!" Jackson shouted. "No! How could it happen? I don't understand? Why was I stopped? Why can't they be saved?"

There were tears in his eyes as he stared at Youji and Ken, and as he blinked them away, he looked at the two young men as though he were seeing them for the first time. "No," he hissed. "Not Michael. You are not Michael. You are Azazel!"

The last word was a scream as Jackson threw himself forward. He crashed headlong into Ken, bringing them both to the floor. Suddenly there was a long knife in his hands, and he stabbed down with it as Ken twisted beneath him, trying to hold his arms. The position of Ken's hands made it impossible to extend his bugnuks, so the boy tried to kick, but in his fervour, Jackson didn't seem to feel it.

Youji seized Jackson's shoulders, but the man half-turned, slicing wildly with the knife and catching Youji across the arm, screaming, "Get behind me, Satan!"

As Youji fell backwards, Ken used the distraction to force Jackson sideways, but even with their positions reversed, Ken still couldn't use his claws, he was too busy trying to keep the knife being driven up into his face while Jackson pummelled his body.

They rolled over again, and now the entire battle was for the control of the knife, which hovered inches from Ken's throat. Ken looked up into the eyes that locked with his own and thought of the stories he'd heard as a child of men possessed by demons. Jackson was putting his entire weight into driving the blade down, and Ken could feel the strength in his arms start to ebb.

"Ken!"

He heard Youji call his name, and looked past Jackson to see a silver loop of Youji's wire hanging in the air above him from where Youji had thrown it over the lighting fixture. In a last desperate effort, Ken took one of his hands from the knife and seized Jackson's chin, forcing his head upwards into the waiting noose. Then Youji pulled with all his strength, dragging Jackson into the air, and as he did so, Ken struck blindly upwards with his bugnuks, then fell back onto the floor, exhausted.

It took him a moment to regain enough strength to stumble to his feet and look up. Jackson was dead, hanging three feet from the ground, his eyes empty and staring, a deep gash in his stomach where Ken's claws had ripped him open.

A few minutes passed as the body swayed in the air, and then Youji lowered it to the ground. The pair slumped into the pews to get their breath back and examine their own injuries, which, it appeared, were superficial. Then they heard the door open as Omi and Aya walked into the chapel.

"Target terminated," Youji said quietly.

"What happened to the bomb?" Ken asked.

"We threw it in the river, just to be sure," Aya told him.

Omi radioed Kritiker to explain the circumstances of the potential attack on the hospital and to have some agents come and dispose of the corpse. None of them asked what the cover story would be; they could read about it in the papers.

As they walked back towards the car park, Youji gave the shallow cut on his arm one last look, and then laid the undamaged arm on Ken's shoulder. "Ken... there's no chance any of those kids actually could be..."

"No, Youji," Ken told him. "The Second Coming doesn't work like that."

"Well, that's good." Youji said. "By the way, happy Christmas, Ken."

Ken stared up at him in astonishment, then hit Youji on the back of the head and strode off. Omi gave them both a perplexed look, while Aya kept going without either noticing or caring.

Youji shrugged, cautiously rubbing the back of his head where Ken had hit it, watched the others walk away, then glanced around to make sure there were no hospital staff nearby.

"God bless us," he muttered, lighting a cigarette, "every one."

_The End_


End file.
